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When I was in school, I made a Pudsey the Bear puppet, learning how to backstitch, cut out foam and stuff it just enough. It wasn’t good, it was great…just kidding it was kind of bad. But I couldn’t understand how my Pudsey compared to Kermit the Frog, for instance. Both were made out of foam and wool and yet, Kermit is so intricate, rich and real. Often, puppetry is downplayed in media, or siloed and coined as kid content, but this blog is about the art of puppetry, its screen origins and how it is still extremely powerful today, for everyone.
Ventriloquism Scares Me
Puppetry started in vaudeville (stage plays) with marionettes and hand puppets. The humans operating them were visible but it didn’t seem to matter, people were enthralled in the puppet voices and emotions. Ventriloquism was also popular, but ventriloquist dummies would speak to humans more and often act as the foil for comedic relief. When media evolved from stage to radio to TV and movies, ventriloquists like Edgar Bergen went to the screen. Fortunately or unfortunately, they have the same uncanny valley effect that dolls do (they look too much like humans that it’s slightly eerie and unsettling), opening the door to frightening films and shows. Ventriloquism movies like ‘The Great Gabbo’ (1929) and ‘Dead of Night’ (1945) had common themes of a control reversal, with the dummy taking over the life of its handler – extremely creepy.
Ventriloquism no longer dominates mainstream screen culture in the way it once did. It seems to have turned more gimmicky, something that a person would get to the final 5 of Britain’s Got Talent for and tour with. I’m not trying to diminish the art, because it’s a gift to do it so well, but ventriloquism hasn’t translated to sustained screen storytelling in the same way puppetry has.
Malleable Felt
Puppets have carried everything from scathing political commentaries and children’s education to monster spawns and tearjerking comedies. And they are not just the typical ‘hand in felt’ that the mind goes to either. Examples like ‘Gremlins’ (1984), ‘Labyrinth’ (1986), ‘Thunderbirds’ (1965-66), ‘Spitting Image’ (1984-present), ‘Bear in the Big Blue House’ (1997-2006) demonstrate this range. This is rooted in fairytales and fables like Pinocchio that used puppets as standalone beings, and it rings true with Basil Brush getting his own show and ‘Sesame Street’ running for almost 60 years. Puppets are constructed to emote and this has been done with animatronics, supermarionette systems, full body suits or simply a puppeteer having Big Bird on their shoulders all day with their arm in the air and mechanisms to make him blink.
Difficult Felt
Being a puppeteer is so difficult and precise! The hand and voice coordination, the focus, the importance of mannerisms. That’s why Jim Henson, one of the most popular puppeteers and creator of The Muppets, Sesame Street, truly deserves his flowers. He started off in a puppetry club in high school, built a studio that redefined what puppetry could do and taught many how to do it. His company expanded to different genres with ‘The Dark Crystal’ (1982) and grew the muppet family into several series and films. Puppet experimentation has been a thread through the industry, and especially with children’s media, that still uses puppets to educate and showcase social diversity. Puppets act as non-threatening moral teachers, using colour, humour and song to make difficult ideas digestible. They occupy a strange space in screen culture – they’re artificial, yet they often feel more emotionally honest than actors. Where else would you accept Grouch being friends with a Bird if not on Sesame Street? When TVs entered people’s homes from the 1950s onwards, Sesame Street was a staple and a pioneer in social acceptance and puppet development. To this day, the puppets teach all ages by lowering our defences – their felt is a filter that allows us to actually accept some hard truths or dare to dream again. When I watch ‘The Muppets’ the screen gets blurry, that’s how deep it gets.
I will say that puppets can be restricted when their lane is picked. That’s why I think when Jim Henson had a brief stint on ‘Saturday Night Live’ or dabbled in proliferation with ‘The Muppets Show: Sex and Violence’, people couldn’t really gel’ with it because of the tonal shift. The puppet characters may evolve but not too much, which is another layer to the difficulty of puppeteering. When Jim Henson passed away, someone had to accurately embody established puppet characters. Can you imagine the pressure of singing Kermit’s “Rainbow Connection” like Jim Henson did, or forever be shunned by The Muppet fanbase? I don’t think I could do it! Puppeteering is often a lifetime role, with one performer forming a near-symbiotic bond with a single character. But the puppet is bigger than any puppeteer…symbolically – and this means that the puppet has to shine, even if we know that there is a new person in the fabric.
So, Elmo isn’t real?
This is crucial because puppets feel so autonomous even though they’re controlled. Miss Piggy is real to me and the general public. Even finding out that she is voiced by a man is a harrowing thought that I don’t want to dwell on any further. But when she’s going on a talk show and the camera pans to her sitting upright on the chair without a puppeteer in sight, the illusion of puppet autonomy deepens. The essence of the puppet is what matters, even if we see a string attached. I’m so glad they’re making a resurgence, and if they leave then I’ll riot.
